July 10, 2025
It's not necessarily true that if one person becomes richer, another becomes poorer. This was a valid concept when resources were limited, but it doesn't hold when technical progress has made it possible to produce more than we can consume. It's not as if China's growth led to poverty in the West; quite the opposite, in fact.
Globalization, however, has led to a polarization of incomes. Only a portion of Westerners have seen their incomes increase, sometimes very significantly, while another segment fears they will live worse than their parents. This is a phenomenon that hadn't occurred in the West for centuries.